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Approximately 34% of American adults rent the home or apartment they live in. With more people renting than at any other time in the past 50 years, investors are starting to look for rental properties to buy. Most investors don’t have the time or experience needed to manage their own properties.

This why they typically hire professionals to manage their properties. If you are interested in how to be a property manager, then you need to get ready for some hard work. While managing various properties can be time-consuming, it is worth the effort considering how lucrative this job can be.

The following are some of the things you should consider when trying to become a successful property manager.

Getting Familiar With The Properties You Manage

When trying to become a successful property manager, you need to work on getting to the know the ins and outs of the properties you have been tasked with overseeing. The more a person knows about the inside and outside of a property, the easier they will find it to maintain it.

A familiarity with the vital systems a property has is also a great way to catch repair issues early on. Staying one step ahead of these problems is essential when trying to keep clients happy.

If a new property manager ignores the need for this in-depth property knowledge, it can lead to a variety of mistakes being made. The last thing you want is to upset a new client with poor service. This is why you need to invest time and effort into familiarizing yourself with properties you have been hired to manage.

Work On Being Available and Dependable

One of the main reasons why property owners hire a management firm is to save time and money. A property owner needs to find a property manager who can help them whenever they have a problem at one of their homes or apartments.

Having success as a property manager will require you to work on being dependable. If you tell a client you are going to do something, you need to follow through.

If you get a reputation for being unreliable, you will have a hard time landing new clients. The key to keeping tenants happy is under-promising and over-delivering on a consistent basis.

Put the Right Team in Place

As your property management business starts to grow, you will find handling all of the work on your own impossible. Instead of letting important tasks fall through the cracks, you need to outsource some of these responsibilities to a third-party.

Working with a larger and more experienced property management firm is a great way to ensure tasks are completed in a timely and efficient manner.

Learning How to Be a Property Manager Takes Time

Instead of getting in a hurry, you need to realize that learning how to be a property manager is not an overnight process. While you will have to spend a lot of time learning the ropes of property management, it will be worth it in the long run.

Are you looking to outsource parts of your property management business? If, contact us now to find out how we can help.

1. Ensure Plumbing, Gas and Electric Are Working

It is crucial that all utilities are in operation before your new tenant moves in. And this is the case regardless of whether you will be paying for them, or the tenant will.

Have your property manager check to be sure there are no clogs or leaks in the plumbing, all the electrical outlets are operating and that heat reaches every room. Utilities are not luxuries – they are necessities.

2. Provide the New Tenant with Important Contact Information

Your new tenant needs to have all of the important contact information BEFORE they move into your property. A property manager can be clear with your tenants about whom they should contact with questions about the property or any maintenance issues (i.e. which utilities to contact, etc).

There’s some basic psychology here. You’re letting them know they are accountable for reaching out for help if there is a question or problem.

Your property manager can email this information to the new tenants, as well as print it out for them to post somewhere in the unit.

3. Cover Specific Tenant Requests or Conditions

If there are specific situations where a tenant may have a request or special requirement, you’ll need to know this BEFORE move-in day.

Get your new tenant to set up any of these requests in writing with the property manager so you everyone is in agreement. Particularly in situations where there are special needs that must be accommodated – such as a support animal for a blind person, for example.

4. Provide Everything Needed for Access to Property

In all the hustle and bustle of moving one tenant out and bring a new one it, it can be easy to forget the little things.

Of course, you’re pretty unlikely to forget the key. But what about an access code to the laundry room or front gate? How about a garage opener?

Your property manager can take care of providing all the keys, codes and openers so you don’t have to think about it.

Sometimes people can get confused with all the different terms that are being used. Sometimes they can sound similar but represent totally different things, other times they can have different names but mean the same thing. The same is true in real- estate management and we want to straighten some things out so you won’t be confused anymore.

Have you ever wondered what exactly is the difference between a real estate managing broker and a real- estate agent? The answer is, of course, simple for those of us who are in the business but it does not mean that we will not try and help you understand the difference.

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A Broker

People generally think that real estate brokers are in some way less important than the agents, but this is far from the truth. Brokers are independent factors in the real estate market and they have a state issued a license to performs their jobs.

That means that brokers are the ones that have the right to open real estate companies and to perform different types of jobs associated with the sales, renting and maintenance of housing properties. Their job is to recognize potentially lucrative property markets and to get the right to work on them, afterward, they can use agents to get the properties sold.

The Agent

The real- estate agent has to rent out the right, so to say, to sell properties from the broker. This is the main difference. Agents need to work from a company that in a sense extends their right to sell real- estate to the agent. But the owners of the licenses are the brokers.

Agents are less independent in this way and they have to rely on other companies or on brokers to keep their workflow. Most people who want to work by themselves in the industry do not opt to become agents, that option is usually reserved for those people who are just starting of in the business.

A Realtor

Now, this last category is in a seance a mix of the previous two. How? Realtors are actually real- estate agents but they are more independent like the brokers. This is because they have to be part of the National Association of Realtors and they must abide by the organization’s rules and ethics but if they do they will have full mobility on the market.

Conclusion

Making sure you have all of the categories in order is a great start for any business venture, there is no difference in the sales and management of a real- estate in that regard. Learning about the differences can start through short definitions like the ones mentioned above because they will give you a clear picture of the different aspects of the market. As you learn more you can build upon that and know all the minute differences, not to mention the ones that are present in the law.